


Ginger Rogers never had to deal with this

by lionsmay



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Asgardian unicorn cows, Bad Days, Everyone hates Elon Musk, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Pepper Potts Feels, Pepper Potts' CEO Superpowers, Pepper Potts's Shoes, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Iron Man 3, Romantic bang trim, Tony Stark wears lifts it is known, Woman in the workplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 08:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14256984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionsmay/pseuds/lionsmay
Summary: Pepper Potts is having a bad day from the get-go and it doesn't get any better as she ends up dealing with various irritating professional or Avengers-related mini-crises, all of them caused in some way or another by Tony. He makes it up to her in the most random and therefore Tony-ish way possible. Generally she wishes he wouldn't stand so distractingly close and make her heart race so fast and make her want to laugh so much when she's supposed to be infuriated with him.





	Ginger Rogers never had to deal with this

Pepper Potts stood outside Stark Industries headquarters in the unforgiving glare of the Los Angeles sun and steeled herself: it was going to be one of _those_ days, she could just tell. Her bangs were too long and they were giving her a headache, she had yet _another_ meeting with the CIA, and Tony was going to be speaking to the press without her.  

Then there were the shoes.

Pepper had sprained her ankle dodging an errant drone almost two months ago and it was not healing to her doctor’s satisfaction. At first she had tried to white-knuckle her way through it — this wasn’t the first time she had worked in pain or discomfort, and she knew it probably wouldn’t be the last — but Happy had caught her limping when she thought no one was looking, and she was forced to admit defeat. 

At her appointment yesterday, Dr. Hernandez had asked Pepper if she was wearing her orthotic shoes as instructed. Pepper had kept her eyes fixed firmly on the white crinkled paper atop the examination table and made vague noises of affirmation. But Dr. Hernandez was not so easily fooled.

Pepper, of course, had not been wearing her orthotics. She had been wearing a rotation of sleek Stella flats, Prada loafers, and, on occasion, the Burberry oxfords she kept under her desk and usually reserved for running errands. All low-heeled shoes. Comfortable shoes. Sensible shoes. Just not _geriatric_ shoes. Pepper had assumed this would be more than sufficient. She was accustomed to her decisions being more than sufficient. This particular decision, however, was not sufficient for Dr. Hernandez, who had said in no uncertain terms that it was the granny shoes or nothing. Nothing, she had specified, being ankle pain for the rest of Pepper’s life. “Maybe a cane by fifty-five,” she’d helpfully elaborated.  

What choice did she have? Dr. Hernandez might have been laying it on a little thick, but Pepper wasn’t about to take any chances. She wasn’t stupid and she wasn’t vain, either. She actually hated that something as superficial as her _shoes_ bothered her so much.

But her high heels — along with her silk blouses, pencil skirts and sheath dresses — had by this point become something between uniform and armour for her. She had adopted her look early in her career because it was unimpeachable, impenetrable: a visual signifier of competence. It said _anything you can do, I can do better. Backwards. In these._ With her ambitions and a name like _Pepper Potts,_ she had needed that. Some might have said that by now she didn’t need her look to speak for her anymore, but she wasn’t so sure.

In any case, the thick, spongy, Band-Aid-coloured monstrosities spoke loudly. They said fragile, fallible, vulnerable; they invited comment.

She hated them.

“Uh, Ms. Potts?”

Pepper started. One of the security guards had obviously noticed her lingering outside the door and now held it open for her.

“Allan, hi!” Pepper shook her head, immediately regretting it when, once again, her bangs fell across her eyes. “Sorry about that! Just lost in thought, I guess.”

Allan smiled warmly. “I don’t doubt it, Ms. Potts. I know you have a lot on your mind.”

Pepper grimaced inwardly — _yeah, my shoes, real deep_ — but kept a bright smile plastered to her face. “That’s right!”

Then, head held high, she strode deliberately through the door and across the lobby, a slight pain flaring up her leg. Grateful for small mercies, she saw that no one else was waiting for an elevator and ducked in alone. Once inside, she collapsed against the walls slightly. Sighing, she pushed the button. All the way to the top.

When Pepper arrived at her office, she saw that Tony had beaten her there. Whether he was up early or late, she couldn’t tell; he didn’t seem to sleep much since New York. At the moment, though, he looked relaxed enough: he was sprawled casually in the leather chair opposite her modernist L-shaped desk, toying with a Rubix cube he had personally designed not to have a solution. Pepper’s pulse quickened, just a little, the way it always did around him.

He lifted his gaze as she approached him and, clocking her feet immediately, let out a low whistle. “Nice kicks, Miss Daisy. You got a hot date at the bingo hall later?

Pepper rolled her eyes and slid behind the glass-topped desk, hanging her purse on the hook she’d had installed underneath.

“Very funny. The doctor says I have to wear them until my ankle heals. Probably about two weeks.”

“Two _weeks_ , huh?” Tony stroked his goatee and ducked his head down to look at Pepper’s feet again. “Did you want me get you a different desk? Maybe something in an oak with a solid front? I can make that happen.”

Pepper rolled her eyes. “I’m fine, thanks. But your concern for my health is touching.” She pushed the hair out of her eyes and unlocked her filing cabinet, pulling out a handful of folders.

“Are you sure? I mean those are just …” he whistled again and shook his head.

She arched a single brow and nodded at Tony’s fire-engine red, thick-soled high-tops. “Speaking of shoes, I think yours are very interesting. Tell me, are those _lifts_?”

“Hey!” Tony whipped his head around to make sure no one had overheard and dropped his voice to a furious whisper. “You promised never to ask me that!”

Pepper grinned, enjoying the petty rush of satisfaction that always came from getting the better of him. “Fine. Let’s just steer the conversation away from footwear in general, shall we?”

“ _Thank_ you.”

“Let’s talk about your launch today instead.”

Tony groaned. “No. _No_ thank you.”

“Tony, I’m serious. Are you sure about this? We can always cancel and reschedule for a more convenient time. Or not at all.”

The launch had been scheduled (if you could call it that) when a reporter caught Tony leaving SoulCycle last week and asked him when the next Stark Industry tech would be out. Tony had shrugged and said, “I dunno, drop by Tuesday morning and find out. Bring fifty of your closest co-workers.”

It had been a two-Chardonnay night for Pepper when she had heard that.

Most of the really exciting new products had already been earmarked for that year’s upcoming Stark Expo, but thankfully the development team had something appropriately nifty but low-stakes to offer: a four-person tent that essentially set up itself at the touch of a button and safely collapsed into a box no bigger than a briefcase. Tony, of course, spent five minutes with it and found a way to make it completely weatherproof and to install WiFi and a fully-functioning sound system, but he had still been skeptical. When Pepper pointed out the implications for everyone from camping families to the festival crowd to disaster relief workers, though, he had come around. 

“Pepper, I’ve got a room full of journalists downstairs. You want me to disappoint them?”

“They’re used to it,” she said flatly.

Tony adopted a wounded expression. “Are you saying I’m a disappointment?” 

“No, I’m saying you’re _mercurial_ and the press knows that. It’s part of your —”  

“Charm?”

 _Yes, but the last thing you need is for me to tell you that_. “I was going to say schtick.”

Tony cocked his head and blinked in mock disbelief. “ _Shtick_? Just for that I’m not going to cancel.” 

Pepper scraped the hair off her forehead and pursed her lips, but she was careful to keep her tone even and gentle. “We could just wait you know. You don’t need to do this right now.”   

No one had quite understood why Tony had decided to gather an entire room of journalists to launch a single product only weeks before a much bigger convention, but Pepper had her theories. Lately he had kept himself cloistered in his home lab, tinkering endlessly with some mystery project. In fact, today was the first time she had seen him at the office in weeks. She wondered if he wasn’t growing twitchy and restless in his self-imposed exile.

The truth was, she was worried about him. She always worried about him, of course, but this was different. He seemed just a little more erratic, just a touch more impulsive than usual. For the hundredth time she wished she could be in the room with him today, but even the CEO of Stark Industries didn’t brush off a meeting with the CIA. 

Tony waved his hands dismissively. “It’ll be _fine_ , don’t worry. I have my publicist, don’t I?

“No,” Pepper said patiently, “you fired your publicist, remember?” 

“Oh yeah.” Tony squinted, as if lost in thought. “Remind me, why did I do that again?”

“Because he told you what to say.”

He snapped his fingers. “ _Right._  Yeah, I hate that quality in a publicist.”

“ _Tony_.” Exasperation was rising in Pepper like mercury in a thermometer, but so, perversely, was her desire to laugh.

“Pepper, please. Have the meeting. Dazzle the G-men. Don’t worry about me. Don’t even _think_ about me.” He leaned forward over the desk. “Wait, no, I take that back. Think about me, but dirty thoughts only. And in fact, while you’re thinking them, can you also be texting them to me? That would be great, thanks.” 

Pepper grinned and pointed toward the door. “Good bye _,_ Tony.”

Undeterred, Tony leaned forward just a little bit more and kissed her. “Knock ‘em dead.”

********** 

Almost exactly one hour later, Pepper padded across the burgundy carpet in her office and dropped heavily into her chair. She exhaled dramatically, blowing the hair off her forehead. Her head was still pounding.

These meetings were getting more and more complicated the closer Tony worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. The CIA had been wary of Tony and eager to get their hands on his tech since the beginning of his Iron Man days (or more accurately, the end of his weapons-manufacturing days), and though that eagerness had abated for a few years, his recent participation with S.H.I.E.L.D and the Avengers Initiative seemed to renew their appetite. Pepper wasn’t surprised that there were rivalries between the two agencies, but it put her in an increasingly uncomfortable position. She felt like she was performing a complicated dance with too many partners, and she wasn’t sure she knew all the steps. 

Her specific job today today had been to convince the CIA they were interested in some innocuous marine locator tech Tony had come up with in an afternoon and to act as if this was a huge concession on Stark Industries’ part. It had not gone well. Or rather, it had gone _fine_ but not perfectly. She had every confidence she’d be able to get them to back off for a bit, but it would take another meeting. It would take another presentation, another set of figures — more time that Pepper didn’t have. _That_ was was what she had been trying to avoid. By that standard, her standard, she had failed.  

It may have been irrational, but she blamed it on the shoes. And on the hair. It was one of the great mysteries of life to Pepper that she could go to bed with bangs that were perfectly fine, and wake up the next morning with bangs that were definitively, infuriatingly too long. 

 _Well, I can’t make my ankle heal, but I can do something about the hair._ Pepper booted up her laptop and opened the online scheduler for her stylist, booking herself in for a quick trim over lunch. Pepper was a good customer and she paid for the privilege of these frequent last-minute appointments.  

That done, Pepper popped an Advil, unwrapped a granola bar, and settled in. She had a mountain of work to catch up on and an inbox she was afraid to look at except through her fingers. Hopefully she could use this opportunity while Tony was still occupied and everything was quiet to actually make a dent in it all.

Pepper took a deep breath, opened her email, and — was immediately startled by the singular, slightly silly clang of an incoming Skype call. She swiveled in her seat to view the second monitor to her left. _Bruce Banner?_ Brow furrowed, she tapped the green button.  

The screen swam with vaguely flesh-coloured pixels before Bruce’s panicked, unusually shiny face materialized. Pepper immediately recognized the room behind him: the lab in Stark Tower in New York. 

“Bruce? Is something wrong? Why do you look so ... sweaty?” 

“Ah, uh, well, we have a bit of—we have a bit of an, ah, situation here …” he stammered. Pepper heard crashing sounds coming from somewhere in the background. Bruce flinched. 

“What kind of situation?”

“Ah, well, ah, it’s a—it’s sort of a—”

“Bruce _._ Five words or less.”

He wrinkled his forehead and Pepper could practically see the effort this level of verbal precision was requiring of him. “Fire … in … the lab?” 

As if on cue, one of Tony’s lab tech robots skittered across the screen behind Bruce, its head engulfed in flame. 

“There’s a _fire_ in the _lab_? Why didn’t the alarm go off? Where are the sprinklers?” 

“Well, that’s what I’m calling about. Tony may have … turned them off? And I was wondering if you knew the code to turn them back on?” 

A second robo-tech whizzed across the screen, this one wielding a small red fire extinguisher in its mechanical arms.   

Pepper clenched her jaw. “Why did he turn off the sprinklers?” She pulled her tablet out of her purse and began tapping the screen.

“He said it would get in the way of us starting a, um, _small_ fire which we absolutely needed to do _for scientific purposes_ but it appears that I have started a larger fire than we had anticipated and, um —” 

Bruce’s prevaricating was interrupted by a yelp, as a cascade of water erupted from the ceiling and rained down on him. In an instant, his unruly thatch of hair was plastered to his forehead. Pepper clicked the cover of her tablet shut.   

“A little warning would have been nice! That kind of thing could be dangerous!” 

Scolding Bruce was a bit like scolding a basset hound, but Pepper summoned her most schoolmarmish demeanor. “You’re fine! And you deserved it! That was poor lab safety protocol, Dr. Banner, and I am disappointed in you. We’ll talk about this in more detail later.” 

The last thing she saw before she hung up was Bruce with his head hung in shame, water dribbling in rivulets down his face. 

The pounding in Pepper’s head intensified and she felt a spike of irritation. Turning off the sprinklers, _honestly._ Someone could have been _killed_. She made a mental note to bring it up with Tony when he was finished and a second mental note not let him quip his way out of this one. She was resigned to him taking stupid risks with his own life, but she drew the line at him risking other people’s. 

For now, though, she seriously needed to get some work done. She took a deep breath and refocused her attention on her screen. She had _just_ begun to make a dent in her emails when the phone rang. It was Gloria So, her assistant.  

“Ms. Potts?” 

Pepper bit back a groan. _What now?_ She was careful to keep her irritation from her voice, though. She prided herself on being a good boss; she knew how it felt to be on the other side of the employee-employer relationship. Also, turnover was bad enough at Stark Industries without her adding to it.  

“Yes, Gloria?” 

“I have a … Mr. Thor … of Asgard to see you?” Gloria’s voice was one giant, bewildered question mark. Gloria didn’t rattle easily, but Pepper supposed meeting the _god of thunder_ would do it.

 _What is he doing here?_ Pepper definitely didn’t have a meeting with him scheduled; she hadn’t even realized he was planetside. _Maybe something Avengers-related cropped up while Tony was still at the launch?_

“Thanks, Gloria. You can let him in.”

Pepper barely had time to replace the phone in its cradle when the door to her office burst open and Thor swept in, red cape and all, and strode toward her.

“Thor, hello. Nice to see you.” Pepper held out her hand. It felt oddly stiff, but of all the Avengers he was the one she knew the least well (probably on account of that whole “from another realm” thing). He didn’t seem to notice the formality.

“Pepper Potts!” he boomed and caught her hand, pumping it in an unintentional vice grip. 

Pepper gestured to the seat in front of her desk and sat down. 

“To what do I owe the pleasure? I hope nothing is wrong.”

Thor beamed at her. “Not at all! I am here to be educated.”

Pepper’s already whirring brain hummed into overdrive and she frowned. “I’m sorry?”

“Didn’t Tony Stark tell you? The last time I was on Earth, I asked him how he thought I was doing, you know, blending in with human society.” At the word ‘blended’ Thor waved his hands in two enormous circular orbits, giving Pepper barely enough time to snatch her orchid from certain destruction. “He said there was still a basic, essential skill I needed to master, one that was taught at every college in America. He said the next time I saw you, I should talk to you about it. For some reason he said it couldn’t be Jane, it had to be you. I assumed he meant for you to teach me. So here I am!” Thor spread out his arms widely, as if ready to embrace education, Pepper and possibly the entire state of California.

Pepper’s head throbbed and she was somehow even more confused than she had been when he walked in the door. “What, exactly, is it that I’m supposed to teach you?”

Thor leaned forward, pronouncing each syllable as if it were a sacred incantation: “ _Underwater basket-weaving_.” He paused and looked to his left and right, a quizzical expression on his face. “Though, I don’t see any water … or baskets … or looms. No matter, I am here to learn and not to question your methods.” He sat back in his chair and smiled expectantly at her.

Pepper inhaled very, very deeply, silently counted to ten, and cursed whomever had first convinced Tony he was funny. Then she fixed a sympathetic smile to her face.

“I’m sorry, there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding.”

It took a few tries and a great deal of patience, but Pepper managed to convince Thor that Tony had been joking and to explain the nature of the joke to him (although not to either of their satisfactions). By the end, Thor had looked touchingly deflated. Pepper hadn’t even realized a godlike being _could_ look deflated and yet he did.

“But I wanted to swim with a basket,” he said finally, in a small, dejected voice.

Pepper closed her eyes and mentally ran through the near-infinite list of things she had to do. _I am the CEO of one of the biggest, most profitable companies in the world_ , she told herself. _I do not have time for this._ Then she opened her eyes and sighed. 

“Look, why don’t I just bring up the location of the closest craft store and you can go there, buy a basket and ... take it into the bath with you. Does that sound alright?” 

Thor considered this for a moment and then brightened. “Yes, please!” He gestured grandly at her laptop. “Consult the oracle.” 

Once she had found the craft store and given him some very specific, detailed directions (and a twenty-dollar bill), Pepper stood to show Thor out. 

“Again, Thor, I’m sorry about the mix-up.”

“Not your fault,” he chuckled. “That Tony Stark is a terrible prankster. But you can’t blame me though, can you?” He looked Pepper up and down and then chuckled again and shook his head. “Cattle clogs in your place of business, baskets underwater — what won’t you people do?”

Pepper stared blankly and Thor pointed at her feet. “Your shoes. On Asgard, that is the footwear of choice for the sturdy-ankled cowherd.”

“They’re not actually — wait, there are cattle on Aasgard?”

 Thor shrugged. “It’s a rough translation. Asgardian cattle are _basically_ like the ones here, except that they’re white all over and they only have one horn in the centre of their head.” He mimed a horn with his hand and then wiggled his fingers. “Oh, and it sparkles somewhat.” 

“Oh my god.”

Thor nodded. “Yes, hideous creatures.” He paused and then smiled cheerfully. “Delicious meat, though.”

********** 

After showing Thor out and taking a moment to grapple with her newfound knowledge of _Asgardian unicorn cows_ , Pepper attempted to pull herself together. She checked her phone. Tony had started halfway through her meeting with the CIA, which meant she had about half an hour before he was finished with the launch itself and the crush of people who’d want to speak to him afterwards.

She set her cell phone to “Do Not Disturb” and closed her laptop. The dreaded inbox would have to wait. Pulling a small key from a secret compartment in the top drawer of her filing cabinet, she unlocked the bottom drawer and pulled out some files she had to review. It wasn’t particularly green of her, Tony called her a Luddite, and the security team always complained about the risk of corporate espionage or just plain loss (as if Pepper had ever lost anything in her professional life), but she just preferred to work with paper. Paper didn’t offer the temptations of news, social media, email, or endless invitations to Candy Crush. Paper was flat, silent, unyielding: just you and you work. 

Arraying her files in front of her with her right hand, Pepper keyed in Gloria’s extension on her phone with her left. 

“Hi, Gloria? Could you hold all my calls for the next half hour and keep my schedule clear? I need about an hour of total quiet.”

“Of course, Ms. Potts. Consider it done.”

Pepper smiled. She still wasn’t quite used to being on the receiving end of that statement, but she liked it.

She settled in and began skimming through the summaries her business development team had brought her. Their own development was done in-house of course, but Stark Industries maintained an extensive portfolio of investment in other technologies and start-ups. Several teams weeded through them before they ever reached Pepper’s desk, but she was known for pragmatism that could slice through self-aggrandizement and general bullshit like a knife through butter. Her ability to judge a good investment was almost infallible. If Pepper thought an idea had potential, it did; if she said it could be a money-maker, it was. Everyone said there was no one sharper and no one more competent than Pepper Potts.

This was the kind of work she was good at, but perhaps more to the point, it was the kind of work people accepted from her. Technically as CEO, _she_ should have been the one on stage launching a new Stark Industries product. But even after her appointment, Tony had remained the public face of Stark Industries. Tony was the one who handled launches and announcements and appearances. Nine times out of ten, Tony was the one the press spoke to.

To his credit, Tony had attempted to pull her into the spotlight at first. It just didn’t quite take. He said it was because everyone was still gun-shy about a non-Stark CEO after Obadiah, but the truth was that she wasn’t who the public wanted. They wanted Tony Stark: billionaire, playboy, genius, _Iron Man_. Her sharpness, her competence just couldn’t compete with his brilliance.

Sure, she had been profiled once or twice immediately following her appointment, but it quickly became clear that what those reporters had wanted was dirt on her relationship with Tony, vaguely inspirational soundbites on her ascension from lowly secretary (their framing, not hers) to CEO, and the answers to a few veiled but no less invasive questions about her reproductive prospects. She responded to these lines of questioning with an instinctive, prickly reserve, and after the media realized they weren’t going to get anything personal out of her, interest had fizzled.

But interest in Tony never fizzled. When he appeared, Stark Industries stocks went up, their social media mentions tripled and the (predominantly male) Board of Directors was just a little more _comfortable_. And, Pepper thought privately, if he was being honest with himself, Tony was more comfortable, too. The spotlight loved him and he loved it back. It was in his nature. So for the sake of the company she steered and the man she loved, she had swallowed her pride and let it go. 

But it still grated on her.

It grated on her to be the woman working in the background, the woman behind the scenes. It grated on her the way letting her ugly shoes throw her off her game grated on her. It felt, in some way she didn’t want to probe too deeply, like she was letting herself down. 

Pepper took a deep breath. _Get a grip_ . She couldn’t let herself spiral and get distracted. _It is what it is_ , she reminded herself, even though she hated that stupid expression. She forced herself to focus on the proposal in front of her. If she could get through a few of these before her hair appointment, the morning wouldn’t have been a total wash.

She had just made it through the first summary when the door to her office swung open. She yelped and jumped to her feet, wincing a little at the sudden pressure on her ankle. A split-second later, Natasha Romanov appeared, cool and insouciant as ever in a black zip-up jacket, skinny black jogging pants, and white high-top sneakers. She sauntered soundlessly across the carpet towards Pepper. 

“Hey.”

Pepper dropped back in her chair. “Nat, _what a surprise_ ,” she said pointedly. “Especially since I’m pretty sure I told —” Pepper heard the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps and was interrupted by Gloria bursting in into the room, her long black ponytail swinging behind her like a flag.

“Ms. Potts, I’m so sorry! I _told_ her you weren’t to be disturbed! But she just _waltzed_ right past me!”  

She glared furiously at Nat, who waved back at her and quipped, “More like a foxtrot.”

Pepper sighed. “It’s alright, Gloria. You did the right thing, but I’ll take it from here. You can go back to your desk. I know you have a lot on your plate right now.” 

Gloria fixed Nat with one final glare over the top of her wire-frame glasses and then spun furiously on her heel and stormed out.  

Nat pointed at Gloria’s retreating back. “I like her.”

This was no great revelation. Nat antagonized and adored Pepper’s employees in equal measure, driving them to distraction with her interruptions and cheerful disregard for rules, all while claiming a deep, abiding affinity with them on account of having once (sort of) been one herself.

Pepper rolled her eyes. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

Nat sauntered over and half-leaned, half-perched on Pepper’s desk. She was forever leaning on things. For a human killing machine, Nat was surprisingly boneless when not in combat mode. She always reminded Pepper of a cat: all elegant languor right up until the moment lethal force was required. 

At this particular moment, Nat’s watchful cat’s eyes were fixed on Pepper and her face was a careful blank. “Before we get to that, I have to ask: what’s with the shoes?”

Pepper sighed. “My sprain isn’t healing and the doctor said I have to wear orthotics for the next two weeks.”

“My sympathies. Been there. I had to wear mine for a month. I was tracking a hostile agent at the time.” Nat paused and shook her head ruefully. “Poor bastard, those shoes were the last thing he ever saw.” 

Pepper snorted and she could see Nat preen a little. Her ability to make Pepper laugh through a bad or downright hostile mood was paralleled only by Tony and she knew it. But like with Tony, Pepper was generally adverse to letting Nat feel too good about herself. She reassembled her features into a frown. “ _Any_ way, again I ask: what can I do for you?”

“Nothing, actually. This time it’s what I can do for you. I was just popping by to drop off some gear I borrowed from Tony and the notifications on my phone went crazy. Have you opened Twitter recently by any chance?” 

Something about the set of Nat’s mouth told Pepper she probably didn’t want to. “Not in the last little while, no. I’ve been trying to get some work done.” 

“See, I thought not. I thought to myself, _if Pepper had seen this, our group text would be exploding right now_.” 

Dread began to bloom, cold and poisonous, in Pepper’s stomach. “Tony’s not set to be finished with the press for another few minutes.”

“Yeah, something tells me they already found their angle.” Natasha nodded in the direction of Pepper’s laptop.

Her palms beginning to sweat and her dread taking root, Pepper flipped open her laptop and opened up Twitter. She scrolled, eyes widening.

One CNN journalist: _Iron Man cites lethal vendetta against Elon Musk_

From MSNBC: _Stark on Musk: “I will take him out”_

And BuzzFeed: _Um, did Tony Stark just imply he was going to murder Elon Musk?_  

Pepper inhaled deeply and squeezed her eyes shut. “Fuck.”

“Well, I think my work here is done!” Nat slid off Pepper’s desk and strolled toward the door.  “Godspeed, Pepper,” she called behind her. Under her breath she muttered, “And wherever you are, good luck, Tony.”

Just short of the doorway, Nat paused and spun around. “Oh right! I meant to ask you — are we still on for drinks Thursday?”

Pepper turned, allowing her expression to speak for her more eloquently than words could.

Natasha raised her hands in a gesture of surrender and backed the rest of the way out the door. “Yikes. Alright, alright, I’ll text you.”

Pepper scrolled through the tweets again and again, her head throbbing even harder than before. She sighed when she caught sight of the clock at the bottom of her screen: her hair appointment would have to wait another day. She scraped her bangs out of her eyes and seethed.

Moments later, her scrolling trance was interrupted by the muted sounds of a scuffle; her head snapped up and she saw Gloria valiantly blocking the door to Pepper’s office with her body as Tony tried gingerly to reach around her.

“Okay, I really want to avoid a lawsuit here, so I’m going to need you to move.”

Gloria remained firm; Pepper noted that her run-in with Natasha had clearly put even more steel in her spine. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark, but Ms. Potts said —”

Tony threw up his hands in exasperation, but still maintained a definitive distance from Gloria. “I _know_ what she said, but do _you_ know that I own this place? I mean, technically _I’m_ your boss.”

Pepper crossed the room in a few strides, bum ankle be damned. “No, you’re not,” she said crisply, pulling open the door.

Gloria windmilled her arms for a second before regaining her balance and then crossing them peevishly over her chest, still facing Tony.

Pepper stretched her lips in what she hoped was a chilling smile. “Thank you, Gloria. That will be all for now.”

Gloria’s chin shot up and, extricating herself from between Pepper and Tony, she swept grandly from the doorway. _I’m giving that woman a raise for attitude alone_ , Pepper thought approvingly.

Tony fixed an exaggerated smile on his face and held out his arms. “Heyyy, sweetie-pie. How’s it —”

Pepper stalked back to her desk and pointed to the chair in front of it. “Sit.”

Tony opened his mouth to speak but seemed to think the better of it. He sat. Pepper stayed standing. She stared down at him for several seconds, allowing the silence to stretch out between them and allowing Tony to grow more and more discomfited. She was genuinely exasperated with him, but she had to admit that the smallest, darkest part of her was enjoying this too, just a little. Finally, she channelled an entire morning’s worth of irritation into five terse syllables. 

“What. were. you. thinking?”

Tony took a breath and Pepper could tell by the set of his features that he was going to try and play it cute.

“Okay first of all, I wasn’t thinking, I was joking. And in my defense, I really don’t like that guy.”

“Of course you don’t like him! Nobody likes him! _I_ don’t like him! He’s controlling and self-aggrandizing and god, if I have to listen to him ‘blue-sky’ what is essentially a glorified city bus one more time I’m going to _scream_. But we have to play nice with him and you two were at least cordial in Monaco, so what the hell happened? Is this all because he called you the Tin Man?”

Tony visibly reeled. “He called me the _Tin Man_ ? When did he call me the _Tin Man_?” 

Pepper ignored him. “How did Musk even come up?”

“After my launch someone asked me to comment on _his_ stupid Puff the Magic DragonX — I told you this tent thing wasn’t big enough — and anyway I am pretty sure he stole part of the propulsion mechanism for that thing from something I told him once when I was, okay, a little drunk —” 

“So what, you guys are having some kind of engineering pissing contest and —”

“ _Tin Man_ , that’s not even _original_ —”

“— you decide to threaten him at your own launch?” 

Tony rolled his eyes, forty-two going on fifteen. “I didn’t _threaten_ him.”

“You said you would ‘take him out.’ That’s a direct quote.”

“I didn’t mean ‘take him out’ mob-style. I meant that I would take him out of the sphere of public relevance via my superior scientific and technological innovation.” 

Pepper silently counted to five — high enough to quell her rising irritation, not so high that she’d be calm enough to laugh at Tony’s quips. “Did you say that?” 

“Not in so many words.” Tony stopped and mouthed silently, clearly mentally replaying the incident. “Okay, not in any of the words after ‘out.’ ”

“You know this is a disaster, right?” She scraped her hands through her hair and sank into the chair behind her desk, her head already swimming with the number of calls she would now have to make.

Tony scoffed. “Don’t you think we should have a higher bar for ‘disaster’ by now? Like, me getting kidnapped by terrorists-stroke-mercenaries: a disaster. Me getting attacked by a Russian dude with a superpowered skipping rope: a disaster. Flying alien centipedes: a disaster. Your shoes: a disaster. But _this?”_

Pepper sighed. “Tony, come on. You and Elon Musk are two of the richest men in America and you front some of the biggest tech and engineering conglomerates. Stockholders do not like it when one impossibly rich tech magnate threatens another. The government does not like it. Our board of directors does not like it.” 

“Do you honestly think anyone believes that I was threatening him?”

“I think it doesn’t matter what they believe! What matters is that the press will write it because you said it and because people will read it. Then it becomes part of the public conversation around you and, serious or not, it gives ammunition to your enemies and anybody who wants to keep you on a leash. I _know_ you know this.” She could feel herself growing short of breath. “On top of all that, it completely distracts attention from the launch _you_ randomly scheduled and —" 

Tony reached forward and grasped her firmly by the shoulders. “Okay, Pepper, I need you to breathe because you’re stressing me out.”

“I’m stressing _you_ out? _I’m_ stressing _you_ out? _I’m_ the one who has to fix this.” She could hear herself becoming shrill and somewhere in the back of her mind she wished fleetingly that he wouldn’t stand so close to her when he was supposed to be being infuriating. 

“No, listen. This is my mess, I will fix it. In fact, I am fixing it. Look, right now it’s just a few tweets, right? No one’s filed anything. They’re all still downstairs grilling whatever poor sod I pulled out of the PR team and I’ve blocked the signal in the building, so no one can tweet anything else. Now I’m going to go back down there — _by myself_ like a big boy — and I’m going to set the record straight and everything will be fine.”

Pepper blinked, her mind racing to keep up. “The press hasn’t left.”

“Nope.”

“They’re all still downstairs.”

“Um, yeah? Honey, are you having trouble hearing or —”

“Then _what_ are you doing _here?”_  

Tony grinned wolfishly and looked over the ridge of his lavender-tinted glasses at her. “Well, it’s no fun making trouble if I don’t getting credit from you for fixing it.” He dropped his hands to her waist and pulled her toward him. “I was hoping you might be so relieved, you’d —”

“Go!” Pepper snapped, her exasperation with Tony mingling with her fury at herself for letting his hands linger a fraction longer than she knew she should have _._ Hopefully he hadn’t noticed.

He smirked. “Hmm, maybe later.” Then he was gone.

_Dammit._

_**********_  

After Tony left, Pepper tried to settle back into her work, but her adrenaline was running too high. She could barely sit still and she longed for a vent to her frustration. _I really need to take up kick-boxing or Krav Maga or something._ She settled for growling and hurling a foam stress reliever (in the shape of the Iron Man helmet, of course) at the glass wall. Three times. 

Hoping that had done the trick, Pepper picked up one of the summaries she had been reading. No dice. Her head was pounding and her focus was shot. She kept reading the same line over and over again, trying to make sense of it, before eventually tossing the entire folder away in disgust. Then she reached back into her drawer and, for the fourth or maybe even fifth time, re-read one she had already marked for approval.

Most of the proposals Pepper got were for flashy start-ups with tech that seemed straight out of an 80s sci-fi set in the future: not quite flying cars but close. This one, however, had was for a smart water filtration device that ran on solar power and could potentially serve an entire community. This was the kind of investment Pepper wanted to make: in a project that might not blow people’s minds, but would certainly change people's lives. All she had to do was find three solid money-makers to offset the cost. Stark Industries would fund the development and then, if the project proved viable, the Stark Foundation would fund its implementation in the communities that needed it.

The first time she had discussed this strategy with Tony, he had quipped, “Using our money to help spend more of our money? It’s brilliant, I love it.” When she had rushed, a little nervously, to explain, he’d stopped her torrent of words with a kiss. “Honey, it’s great,” he’d said softly. “You’re going to save the world.”

Remembering that moment — his pride and easy trust in her and his knee-jerk generosity — started to dissolve the hard lump of frustration weighing on her chest. She heard her mother’s voice in her head: _Virgina, you’re a soft touch._

Then Pepper’s wistful train of thought was interrupted by the sound of her office door opening. She glanced up and, once again, saw Gloria standing in front of her.

Poor Gloria had been put through the ringer today and it showed. Her glasses were slightly askew, the collar of her blouse was crumpled, and her ponytail, half-undone, had sunk from its usual pert position to somewhere near the base of her neck. Strangely enough though, at this particular moment she looked downright beatific.  

“Yes, Gloria?”

“Ms. Potts, Captain Rogers—Mr. America—he—he’s heeeere.” She sighed dreamily.  

Pepper pursed her lips, valiantly suppressing a snicker. This wasn’t uncommon. Steve had a singular effect on people’s words, drawing them out and making them all lilting and breathy. There was just something about him — a casual _Hi, Steve_ somehow became _HiiIIIIiiii, SteEEEeeve!_ without the speaker even realizing it. Pepper had once made the mistake of sharing this observation with Tony; he’d (appallingly) called the effect “loose vowels” and now pointed it out at every opportunity.  

“Thank you, Gloria. Please send him in.”

Gloria shuffled away and, moments later, Steve appeared in all his glory. He was clad in the full Captain America regalia, as well as the personal sunbeam he seemed to carry with him wherever he went. His skin was luminous, his hair glistened where the light caught it, and his blue eyes sparkled; if someone had told her it was from a halo, Pepper probably would have believed it.

“Hi Steve.” She smiled, but she was careful to keep her diction crisp.

Steve swept her up into a perfect hug. “Hey, Pepper. How are you doing? Everything okay?” 

Pepper flushed. “The-shoes-are-orthotics-I-sprained-my-ankle,” she said in a breath.

Steve’s eye widened in concern. “Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. Are you alright? Can I get you anything?”

“I’m fine. Thank you, though.” He still looked worried, so she added, “I thought you were asking if I was okay, you know, because of my shoes.” She gestured to her feet.

Steve tilted his head to look under the desk. “Oh! No, I just meant because everyone out there seems a little frazzled. I actually hadn’t noticed your shoes.” 

She arched an eyebrow. “You hadn’t?”

“Not to impugn your usual choice of footwear, Pepper, but with a smile like that, who’s looking at your feet?”

Pepper grinned. That kind of thing would have been a line from anyone else, but from Steve it was genuine. _Artless_. That’s what he was, artless. Most of the time Pepper preferred a little art. People who were too sweet or too sincere had the perverse effect of making her meaner. But in this, as in all things, Steve was the exception.

“Well, thank you for that. But what are you doing here anyway? Shouldn’t you be in New York training? You know, jogging alongside a high-speed train or something?”

Steve chuckled like Pepper had made the best joke he’d heard all week. “Actually I’m in town filming a few public service announcements for high schools. At the moment it is my patriotic duty to remind the children of America to floss and I am proud to do it.”

She tilted her head, considering him. “I’ll bet you are, but that still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing _here_.” 

“Well, they have me filming on an movie lot, and … I don’t know. Have you ever been on one?” Steve ducked his head a little. “Everything around you _looks_ like the real deal, but there’s always something … off about it.” He frowned. “They’re more realistic than they used to be, but that just makes them worse. Anyway, I had a couple hours to kill between shooting, and I just thought that if it was okay with you, I’d kill them here instead. Where things are normal.”

This was something he did when he was in town. Steve liked the executive offices of Stark HQ; he never said why, exactly, but Pepper thought he probably liked to be anywhere people knew who he was, but didn’t care too much (Gloria aside). Sometimes he would sit in Pepper’s office for hours, silently doing the crossword or reading the paper. For her part, Pepper found Steve’s quiet, uncomplicated presence relaxing, like slipping into a warm bath. She could already feel her shoulders dropping away from her ears. His timing couldn’t have been better.

“No one but you would describe this place as normal _,_  but you’re welcome to hang out as long as you like.” Pepper spun toward her filing cabinet and reached into the top drawer. “I even have that sudoku book you were working on last time.”

Steve’s eyes lit up as he took it. “Oh, perfect! I promise you, you won’t hear a peep out of me.” He quickly settled in the seat opposite Pepper with his book in hand, his brow furrowed, and the tip of the pencil pressed up against his lips.

Shaking her head and smiling to herself, Pepper turned her attention to the work in front of her. She and Steve passed fifteen minutes in companionable silence until Pepper saw Steve’s head snap up and turn towards the door. Seconds later, Tony slunk into the office.

Pepper was on her feet in an instant, wincing as she set weight on her bad ankle. The calm she and Steve had cultivated was shattered.

“How did it go?”

Tony’s eyes widened. “How did it go? Well, it went — hey, Cap!” Tony clapped him on the shoulder enthusiastically.

Steve looked somewhat bewildered at the warmth of Tony’s tone. “Uh … hi?” 

“Long time no see, buddy, how you been? Hey, is that a sudoku you’re working on? Wow, exciting stuff, huh?”

Pepper, who recognized diversion at fifty feet, scraped her hair off her forehead and sighed impatiently. “ _Tony_. How did it go?”

She saw Steve’s eyes flicker curiously between her and Tony, but gentleman that he was, he didn’t ask any questions.

“Okay, okay.” Tony clasped his hands together, prayer-like, in front of his mouth and winced. “I may have made things … slightly worse.”

“Worse? How?”

“Well, you know, I was pissed. They were deliberately misrepresenting me, it was creating problems between you and me, and I … may have been a little snarky. Or a lot snarky. I mean, really, I am a _gift_ to reporters and _this_ is how they repay me? So I dressed them down a little bit.”

Pepper squeezed her eyes shut. “You didn’t.”

“I did! I said it was disingenuous of them to take me literally, and that any story on this would be bad, clickbait journalism, and then I joked that besides, they should probably be nicer to the guy who could design an AI to write their listicles. And then they asked if I was threatening the freedom of the press and I said of course not and they said no, just their jobs and, well, it all sort of went downhill from there. Someone hustled me out, I’m not sure who, but I probably owe them a fruit basket.”

 _“Tony._ ” Pepper felt a flush spread across her chest and climb up her neck. She could hear the roar of her pulse in her ears, could feel it pounding in her temples.  

“It was a joke! I was kidding! I could do it, design the AI I mean, but I wouldn’t. You know I have the utmost respect for fine people of the press.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I think everyone is just overreacting." 

At that, Steve took one look at Pepper’s face and closed his book. “I should go.” 

Tony, clearly also gauging Pepper’s expression (too late), held out his hands as if to block Steve’s path, his eyes wide with alarm behind his lilac lenses. “No, wait, stay. Seriously, please stay. My life might depend on it.”

Steve smiled apologetically. “They probably need me back at the studio. You know, for makeup or something.”

“You’re lying! I know you’re lying! You never need makeup, not even for the camera. I hate that about you,” Tony turned back to Pepper. “He always has the perfect glow, it’s infuriating. Don’t you find it infuriating?” 

“It’s not on the top of my ‘Most Infuriating’ list right about now,” she spat through a clenched jaw.

Tony spun back to Steve, his hands clasped in front of him. “Buddy, can you at least leave the shield? I feel like I’m going to need it.”

Silently, Steve stood and tucked his chair neatly back in against the desk. 

“Bye, Pepper. Thanks for the company. Tony …” he winced. “Good luck.” Then, throwing one last sympathetic smile at Pepper, he turned and walked away, whistling what Pepper recognized as “Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams.”

“Bye Grandpa! See you for meatloaf night at the old folks’ home,” Tony called to him. Turning back to Pepper, he shook his head. “Sudoku, really? That guy acts a decade older every time I see him. _Looks_ a decade younger, though. It’s disgusting.” He paused, clearly waiting for a reaction. “No? No smiles?”

Pepper could still feel the blood pounding through her, hot and furious. The tips of her ears were probably bright red by now, but she didn’t care. “Not everything is a game, Tony. Not everything is a joke.”

“Oh, come _on_. It was _clearly_ a joke. The first time and the second time. Besides, there’ll be another story in 24 hours, and everyone will move on. It doesn’t matter.”  

“Yes, it does matter. Even if the story doesn’t last, it matters because this wasn’t just about you. It matters because there was an entire team who worked on that project and another team who worked on the launch, on very short notice, I’ll add. And thanks to you, and your constant need to be Mr. Quippy, their work goes unnoticed. Because what is everyone focusing on? Not the product. Not the launch. _You_. Again. So don’t tell me it doesn’t matter. Because it does. It just doesn’t matter to _you."_

Pepper could hear her voice shake, could taste the sob she was biting back and embarrassment flooded through her, hot and queasy, mixing with the frustration and anger already churning inside her.

Tony looked stricken. “Pepper, I — I didn’t mean …” 

“I know.” Pepper sank back into her chair, feeling simultaneously jittery and spent. “I know you didn’t. But that doesn’t make it any better. Look, why don’t you get out of here, okay? I have a lot of work to do now and I need to focus."

Tony nodded and left without another word. And even though he’d listened to her, even though he’d done exactly what she’d asked, sitting alone in her office Pepper somehow felt worse. 

*********

She spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening making a series of long, reassuring phone calls: first to the Stark Industries board of directors, then to the owners of every outlet represented in the launch today, and finally to Musk’s people, each call accompanied by a generous donation or an elusive set of tickets or a promised introduction. If Tony had been there, he would have told here this wasn’t her job anymore, but Pepper knew better. She may not have been Tony’s assistant anymore, but she was still the person people looked to to clean up his messes.

Even their own PR department had needed to her. They had wanted to issue a straight retraction and apology, but Pepper had argued it wasn’t Tony’s style and that it was better not to draw more attention to the incidents. Instead, she’d arranged for an employee to film her particularly photogenic toddler and equally photogenic dog playing in the tent, demonstrating its safety features and capturing the kid’s wonder at the near-magic of how it sprang into place. It was funny, it was adorable and it had already begun to go viral, inspiring several copycat videos from bloggers and personalities who had been hand-delivered the tent that day. Soon posts describing and linking to the video would follow. Pepper felt fairly confident the story would refocus to the product itself within a day or so, provided Tony kept his mouth shut — which he would, if she had to sew his lips together herself.

She had done well, she knew. But now the surge of adrenaline, the rush that thrummed through her veins during any crisis, had ebbed, and she was just exhausted. She wondered, not for the first time, whether she should find another job. It wasn’t like she hadn’t had other offers. Even if the public wasn’t interested in her, potential employers were. She’d had to delete her LinkedIn less than a month after getting it because the notifications drove her crazy. And surely it couldn’t be good for the two of them to be working closely like this. The borders between their personal and professional lives were, well, _permeable_ wasn’t quite a strong enough word. _Nonexistent_ would be more accurate.

Then she tried to picture her professional life without Tony. She tried to imagine what it would look like if she was just running a company and then coming home to her unpredictable, impossibly charming boyfriend, instead of running interference for him at work too. And time and again, it looked like dancing. Forward. In sensible shoes. 

It looked _boring._  

She wasn’t sure why she was built this way — why the pragmatism that governed every other aspect of her life stopped just short of her heart. Maybe her mother was right; maybe was a glutton for punishment. Maybe she was a junkie, addicted to the dizzying highs and dangerous lows of a relationship that consumed (and sometimes indirectly threatened) her life. Maybe she just wasn’t built for stability. All she knew was that being with him, even at his most aggravating, was a rush like nothing else she’d ever known. Tony was a high-wire act, and with him she was pirouetting across the sky, never once pausing to look down.

This relationship may not have been healthy, but every cell in her body sang with the giddy thrill of it. He made her feel _alive_. After everything that had happened, feeling alive was something.

She knew they couldn’t keep it up forever. Sooner or later it would stop being fun; sooner or later the fear would outweigh thrill. Sooner or later they would fall. But knowing all that didn’t make a damned bit of difference. Pepper would dance across this tightrope until she tumbled and hope that when she did, there would a net of her own making waiting to catch her.

She was lost in thought and staring blankly at her laptop when his voice cut through the silence.

“I saw the video. You really brought out the big guns there: a baby _and_ a dog. What was that, a golden retriever?”

Pepper did not look up. “A golden doodle. A retriever would be too obvious.”

Tony let out a breath that was something between a laugh and a sigh. “Well, that’s hard for even me to compete with. You did good." 

Pepper kept her eyes down, but her traitor heart had already picked up its pace. “I know.”

There was a long silence and she willed herself to let him be the one to break it.

“Pepper?”

It was his tone, more than anything, that made her look up. She searched him with her eyes, noting that his face, naked now of the purple glasses, looked pale and wan under his fake tan. His cheeks were drawn and she wondered if he had anything to eat since this morning. Momentarily panicked, her eyes sought out the comforting blue light of the arc reactor. It glowed steadily. Her gaze flicked back to his face. She noticed for the first time that his eyes were puffy and ringed with shadow. She thought of the number of times she woke to find him not yet in bed or already up, and the times she woke beside him as he started out of a nightmare. Her heart twisted.

Tony, misunderstanding the intensity of her stare, held up his hands in surrender, a pair of small silver scissors in one hand and what appeared to be tablecloth and the straps of a lumpy-looking tote bag in the other.

“Don’t shoot. I come in peace.”

“That would be a lot more convincing if you weren’t brandishing a weapon,” she said drily. But she was interested in spite of herself.

Tony looked skeptically at the scissors. “These? They’re not a weapon. They’re a styling aide.” 

Pepper stared at him blankly. _I did not think this day could hold_ another _puzzle for me and yet …_

“For your hair? It’s doing that thing you hate.”

Pepper felt something warm flicker in her stomach and she tried fruitlessly to tamp it out. _Dammit, dammit, dammit._

“How do you know that?”

“I may be clinically self-absorbed, but I do _know_ you, Pepper. And if I had to guess, I’d say you missed your appointment to get your hair done today because of my whole … well, let’s not revisit it. Because of me. Am I right?" 

“You are.”

“So I’m here to make amends.” 

Pepper’s eyebrows shot up so far they practically disappeared into her hairline. Of all the things he could have said and done, this was the last she would have expected. Which, of course, made it classically, perfectly Tony.

“You expect me to let you _cut my hair_?”

He had the gall then to look at her like she was the unreasonable one. “Not your _whole_ hair. Just the front bit.”

“Uh-uh. No way.”

“Why not?”

She was immediately presented with a host of possible answers: _Because I should still be mad at you? Because you have the attention span of a fruit fly for anything that isn’t made of metal? Because you can’t fix a fight with a trim?_ But she settled on, “Because you’re not a hairdresser. _”_

Tony scoffed. “I’m sorry, have you _seen_ these sideburns?” He craned his neck to one side and the other, gesturing dramatically at his head. “These are _art_. They require daily maintenance." 

“And you do that maintenance … yourself?” It seemed preposterous to her that Tony, who she knew had a bi-monthly appointment with a manicurist and a ‘brow guy,’ would do this.

“What, do you think I have time to go to a barber every day? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of a busy guy. No, I do it myself in the bathroom.”

Pepper narrowed her eyes and cocked her head, still suspicious. “How have I never seen this?” 

“How have you never seen my _grooming ritual_? Please. A man likes to maintain a little mystery.”

A smile threatened at her lips, so she pursed them instead. “You know you could have someone come to you, right? Like you do for everything else?” 

“Yes, but then I’d have to talk to him first thing in the morning.” He swallowed and looked at her for a second before continuing, a little more softly now. “And you know the only person I talk to before coffee is you.” 

That flicker of warmth in Pepper’s stomach blazed through her every limb now, and she knew she was lost. It made her ache to see him like this: vulnerable and serious and stripped bare of the titanium-strength sarcasm he wore like, well, a suit. It was something few people ever saw. It was rare and it was special and Pepper would have traded every gadget and gizmo in the whole damn company for a single minute of it. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I do know that.” 

“So …?”

Pepper took a deep breath and fought valiantly with the smile that had been battling its way to the surface ever since he had swept into her office brandishing a damned tablecloth like a matador. She lost. It suffused her face and she knew she was grinning harder than Gloria had that afternoon. 

“I’m trusting you.”

“I know,” Tony said, his voice practically a whisper. “And, for once, I won’t let you down.”

Pepper rolled her chair away from her desk and crooked a finger.

Tony crossed the room in seconds. He knelt down in front of her and released the lever underneath her chair, lifting her up until her head was be at the right height for his arms and the toes of her hideous shoes were just skimming the floor. Pepper fought a giggle as she let him wrap the tablecloth around her neck and fasten it at her nape with plastic clawed hair clips. He methodically lay the scissors and a comb down on her desk. Then, with a flourish he reached across to grab the plant mister Pepper kept to water her orchid. Careful not to get any water in her eyes, Tony gently misted her bangs. He ran his thumb across her eyebrow and then softly down the side of her face, along her jaw and across her lips.

“Chin up, Pep." 

Pepper’s heart lurched and she could feel her breath growing shallow. She was half tempted to nip at his thumb, but she knew that would turn this moment into something else, and she was still revelling in the strange, surreal gentleness of it. So she closed her eyes, lifted her chin, and gave herself over. 

She could feel Tony carefully comb the hair down her forehead, his touch feather-light. A moment later, she felt a cool edge of steel against her brow and heard the crisp whisper of the scissors. Tiny flecks of hair rained softly down her face. She opened her eyes a crack and saw Tony, his face inches from hers and his attention laser-focused on her. She swallowed hard. Eventually the scissors stopped, and again she heard the wet hush of the plant mister. A moment later, she felt the a damp towel — one of Tony’s, Egyptian cotton, she could tell — on her face as Tony gently wiped the bits of clipped hair off her cheeks. 

She laughed. “You really thought of everything, huh?”

“Stop smiling and let me work,” he said, faux-sternly.

Eyes still closed, Pepper tried to fix her features in an exaggerated frown, but she could feel the smile keep breaking through, wide and giddy. Finally, she sensed that he had stilled.

“Are we done now?”

“Almost. Just one more thing.” There was a pause and then Pepper felt the warmth of his mouth, soft but insistent, on hers. She leaned into the kiss and all the frustration and uncertainty of the day melted away.  

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against her mouth, his forehead touching hers. “I was stupid and I was reckless and I’m going to try to do better." 

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Pepper took note of the word ‘try’ and lack of specificity of his apology and she fought hard to hold onto that, but it was hopeless. Her breath caught in her throat and it was all she could do to murmur softly, “Okay.”

And she didn’t know if it was the smile or the haircut or the kiss or the apology, but damned if her headache wasn’t gone.

Tony pulled away and, after reaching into his seemingly bottomless tote bag, pulled out a mirror. He spun it toward Pepper. “Looks pretty good, right?”

“It does,” she admitted grudgingly.

“See? I’m a bang expert.” He grinned mischievously. “And on that note” — Pepper groaned at what she knew was going to be a terrible segue, but Tony pushed onward — “on that note, I do have other plans to make things up to you, but they are going to require a headboard. So what’s say we get out of here?”

 Pepper let him wait for a second, then smirked. “Yeah, alright.”

Tony never needed telling twice. He swept her out of the chair and into his arms and carried her easily toward the door. His lips were inches from her face and she could feel his breath warm and soft against her ear.

“Honey,” he murmured, “you’ve got to promise me one thing.” He lowered his voice dramatically, to a husky whisper. “ _Keep the shoes on_.”

 Pepper burst into gales of laughter as Tony carried her across the threshold.

**Author's Note:**

> The thing about Pepper's bangs going from fine to aggravating is purely autobiographical. This entire story started because I woke up one day with aggravating, too-long hair and thought to myself, "I'll bet this never happens to Pepper Potts!" And then I thought, "Well, what if it did?"


End file.
